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Texas Mayor Paula Bacon Kicks Some Horse Slaughter Tail

This kind of situation is, unfortunately, nothing new to residents of towns that slaughter cows, pigs, sheep and poultry, as Bacon’s critics like to point out. These include lawmakers like former Montana Representative Ed Butcher, whose state is looking to profit from slaughtering horses for foreign markets, along with Sue Wallis, a state representative and pro-slaughter advocate from the small town of Recluse.

Do a Google search and you can find stories from not long ago about slaughterhouses pumping partially treated sewage (mostly blood, entrails and manure) into local waterways, as happened at Beltex and Cavel. These were also shut down when the USDA decided to stop funding inspections of horse slaughter plants five years ago.

Bacon’s used to the slaughter industry’s “two wrongs make a right” argument. “We dealt with people telling us to suck it up for 30 years. It just seemed like a necessary evil. We thought we were stuck with it.”

“Quite Frankly, We Don’t Want You Here.”

This was the message delivered to Dallas Crown on Tuesday, January 21, 1986 by Mayor Harry Holcomb and the Kaufman City Council. Representatives of the plant, which had been around since the late ’70’s, went to the meeting, looking to get operations back online after a year-long shutdown following several months of bloody bathtubs and streets incidents.

“How would you like to have blood in front of your house and have the smell of manure and flies all around?” complained a resident at the meeting. Others worried about children getting sick.

A city waste water analyst told the council that if pre-treatment requirements were met, the conditions wouldn’t be as bad as in the past. “The amount of odor created by wastewater should be minimized,” he said, “and they shouldn’t be putting blood into the sewer because they can sell it. Every pint of blood they pour down the sewer is lost money. If they violate the waste-water ordinances of the city, they can be forced to come into compliance, or be closed.”

Mayor Holcomb stated, “That plant has never made the city a dime and never will,” then relented, believing the town could close Dallas Crown if it failed to comply with ordinances and regulations. And Dallas Crown quickly agreed to meet the city’s requirements. “We want to be good members of the community,” said Henry Serruys and Jack Kemp, representing the plant’s foreign owners.

Other promises followed. “We don’t go on the market to get ‘good’ horses. We get surplus horses—those that would be sent to the glue factory or others not fit for other use,” said plant manager Serruys. Estimates of horses slaughtered per week: 300.

These would be killed “in a fraction of a second,” Serruys claimed, with a captive-bolt device. He also promised that a “USDA inspector will be on site each day to ensure that the plant operates under government regulations and the plant will work under the guidance of the humane society.”

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Vickery, Thank you for another outstanding kick butt article. You have all the connections! If Mayor Paula Bacon ever wants to clean house big time I’ll chip in on her Washington DC ticket. Those good old boys need a wake up call. Do you think they really believe we believe any of the words coming out of their mouths anymore? We all know it’s a matter of what you got that they want that get’s the votes that moves the American world. And that’s a shame. You know, Vickery, until European influence, NAI women were the Master of Ceremonies. Let’s clean house and shake out the chinks before they hook up with that 5 mil and set up another stinkin’ horse slaughterhorse. The good ol’ boys taint seen nothin’ yet. You get Mayor Paula and I’ll round up a posse of cowgirls. And we’ll all mail petitions to some female representatives who have so much sense God gave them power to create and carry life. Unlike man who is most notably a hunter. Who ever heard of putting hunters in charge of life? Congress just does not make any common sense. I can see it now, President Paula and Vice Oprah. https://sites.google.com/site/horsesasnationaltreasure/

To Stephanie, agree with you 100% and thank you Vickery for keeping this important issue in the forefront. We have some politicians that are listening to the majority, but many are not and that includes Obama.

Thanks so much for this informative and superlatively written article about the slaughterhouse in Kaufman, Texas. You are one of the very few people in media who trouble to get the real story, and you’ve done a great job telling it.

One of the most galling aspects of horse slaughter is the good ol’ boy attitude that helps support it, as you say, and the blatant disrespect that comes along with it. A Sept. 1, 2005 article by Mary Jacoby in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112726478131246913,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one), titled “Why Belgians Shoot Horses in Texas For Dining in Europe”, quotes Olivier Kemseke, one of the family owners of Dallas Crown, within her final paragraph: “Even the oversized American flag at the American Legion post that greets drivers entering Kaufman is paid for by Mr. Kemseke’s horse-slaughter business. “So they want to close us down?” Mr. Kemseke says. “Then I don’t know where Kaufman’s gonna get their next flag.”"

Kemseke is also quoted in the article as saying, of living in Kaufman: “”I had a little cowboy thing going,” he says, slapping his pants and shirt. “Wrangler jeans, the belt, the boots, the Western shirt.”" (The article in WSJ archives can only be read by subscribers, but a copy can be found here: http://www.purethoughtshorserescue.com/rssnewsroom/index.php?channel=1&article=4.)

In a Nov. 21, 2011 KFBB news program titled “The Pros and Cons of Horse Slaughter”(http://www.kfbb.com/news/local/Part-1-The-Pros-and-Cons-of–Horse-Slaughter–134292343.html), Ed Butcher, ex-State Representative from Montana, is quoted as saying of Paula Bacon “”There’s that mayor of that little town, running around making noise that there is blood running in the streets in the town,” Butcher said. “Well, what had happened, because I checked into it, and she was lying as usual or greatly exaggerating what had happened. You got all these environmental laws, and that has to be built into the plant.”"

The good ol’ boys are so arrogant, so unaccustomed to challenge, that they think that merely saying something makes it true, and that the law, and community welfare, and the welfare of our American horses, can be cynically disregarded from their unassailable positions of privilege and power.

Thanks for writing, Nancylee. Definitely going to check out the story of the Kemseke family. So telling that Kemseke thought Kaufman couldn’t get its own American flag. I think the town’s proved him wrong on that one quite a few times since DC locked its gates.

Bravo, Paula, you go girl!! I’d never wish a horse slaughter plant on her community, but I’m damn glad that she was Mayor when it came to her town! Even today, Paula’s commitment to horse welfare and rallying against indefensible corporate practices provides a model for anyone who cares about proper process and doing the right thing. Thanks to Paula for advocating so capably here in Massachusetts for horse welfare, another area which she used to call home and she cares so deeply for humane treatment that she acts now for horses here. Vickery, many of us are following every piece that you put out now! I and many others are grateful for your knowledgeable, informed, and empowering pieces as we work for improvements to horse welfare and to gain state and federal slaughter bans. Thank you, Vickery, you rock!